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UK: Migrants ‘are natural Tories’ says Conservative pol, but that may not be true if they’re Muslims

Immigrants to Britain are natural Conservatives who are finding the party more and more attractive, Grant Shapps has claimed.

The Tory party chairman said the Conservative message of working hard and getting on appeals to voters who have come to settle in Britain and often ‘work every hour’ to provide for their family.

Mr Shapps was responding to Manchester University research, reported in yesterday’s Daily Mail, showing two London seats – Brent North and East Ham – which will be contested at the general election contain a majority of voters born overseas.

However, the Turkey-based World Bulletin notes that Muslim voters in Greece (a small minority left over from the Ottoman era), despite being conservative socially, turned out enthusiastically to vote for Syriza, led by an atheist. In Turkey itself, practising Muslims are strongly attracted to the right.

As the Muslim minorities, who arrived in Europe as an immigrant work force, acquired the right to vote, in other words, as they became settled, it shouldn’t be a coincidence that they started to generally prefer left-wing parties.

Whether they come from Maghreb, or a black African, or from the Indian subcontinent, or from Turkey, they have the same problem to confront. Unfortunately, they don’t have much choice.

When you divide a community with sharp lines like, West-East or Muslim-Christian, the tendency to see monoblocs might preponderate. No matter how much they identify their existential identities as Muslim, it’s clear that, in the lower levels, this mass is surrounded with local practices in their political and communal preferences and that different factors come into play. Besides, without an organization, deprived from the country’s support, foreign and weak, they are giving up the struggle to stay standing in an environment of socio-economic and cultural hegemony…

…In that case, because of practical reasons, the Muslim minorities become familiarized with the equalizing expression of the left-wing parties, which voices the rights of minorities.